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> You've missed the step where the higher socioeconomic classes opt-out of the shit K-12 education by moving to better school districts, sending their kids to p

> You've missed the step where the higher socioeconomic classes opt-out of the shit K-12 education by moving to better school districts, sending their kids to private schools, or homeschooling them. No, I did not. I stated that our schools are garbage. If we fixed that, it really won't matter what anyone else does with their kids, public schools would be great. Put a different way: There is no justification whatsoever for our public schools should be crap. The only reason this happens is because we do not exercise the kind of control and set the kinds of standards needed to provide every child in the country with the education they deserve. Teaching should be a profession where the standards and performance we demand from teachers are of the highest levels. That implies (and requires) that bad teachers are expunged from the system like a bad infection. Curriculum and teaching standards have to be optimized for top-of-the-world results. This, BTW, also has to include kids who, for whatever reason, are not college-bound. Not everyone needs to or has to go to university. The problem is our schools are so bad that the average high school graduate is good for nothing other than maybe, again, maybe, going to college. The average high school graduate in the US is good for stacking boxes and, with training, making coffee. That is a tragedy and a massive failure of the system. What people with money would not matter at all of our public schools were driven by a merit, performance and results-based system that floated the best teachers, teaching methods, technology and curriculum to the top. This would require up-ending our entire system of education. Which means it is likely just-about impossible.

mlyle 4y ago
> That implies (and requires) that bad teachers are expunged from the system like a bad infection. Good luck with this, when the working conditions and compensation are such that staffing education at all is a massive struggle, let alone being selective. (I do think that quality of teachers is sometimes an issue, but I think there are larger systemic issues impeding education than the quality of workers on the front line.) > teaching methods, technology and curriculum Teaching methods and curriculum are important. And educational research is mostly crap: well controlled studies basically don't exist. EdTech, etc, is part of the problem. Occasionally technology is a great support to teaching, but I'm a STEM teacher who teaches the "T" without much technology at all: certainly much less than is trendy in core classrooms (like, no joke, having middle school students write out machine language programs on paper). Edtech is expensive and very often unproven snake oil that allows distractions into your classroom, but it's something administrators love to point to to show they're doing something.
- robomartin 4y ago
  > when the working conditions and compensation are such that staffing education at all is a massive struggle, let alone being selective Of course. And that needs to change. Right? However, this should not be a freebie. Pay more? Absolutely. And, with that, comes a require for excellence and performance that should be no different from any job where, if you don't perform, you are out looking for work elsewhere. > I'm a STEM teacher who teaches the "T" without much technology at all This is crazy. I am not sure how to put it other than, with the money we spend our public schools should be so good that private schools --not just in the US, world-wide-- should use them as a tough-to-follow metric. I have tried very hard in our own school district to help up the level of STEM education in a range of ways. My first attempt was with one of the local elementary schools. I offered to fully fund and conduct a model airplane STEM program for up to 100 students (about three classrooms). I would provide airplane kits to build and, for the more advanced class, also the radio control equipment. I met with the Principal to discuss. A couple of meetings later the county and school district got involved. The only way I can described what happened is "dystopian". Rather than jump on the opportunity to provide our kids with something like this, the reaction and interaction was in a range between being ghosted and feeling like I was the enemy at the gates. Truly incomprehensible. My next attempt, years later, was to introduce a robotics class as at four local schools (two elementary, one middle and one high school). I scheduled and met with all four Principals from these schools. I brought with me a short presentation as well as a small inexpensive robot made from 3D printed parts and RC servos with an Arduino for control. Once again, I volunteered to fund the entire thing at all four schools. Well received. Good conversation. One of the Principals took lead and proposed to organize a meeting with the science and math teachers from all four schools. This felt like progress. What happened next? I was ghosted. Seriously. And my kids attended two of these schools at that time. The meeting never happened. Emails and calls were never returned. Nothing. Once again, I eventually dropped the matter. Fast forward to just about a month ago. I offered the local high school's Physics teacher to come in every so often to help with anything she needed. I could bring interesting STEM show-and-tell items from my work in aerospace, robotics and more. She was kind enough to thank me for the offer. Since then, silence. I asked one more time. Nothing. One of my kids is in her class. I spend more time teaching my kid the Physics she is not teaching than she probably does actually teaching the kids in class. It's crazy. We have a bad teacher problem. We have a bad schools problem. Until the system is morphed into one where excellent teachers and excellent schools survive and bad ones do not, we are not going to improve outcomes. And, yes, of course, this affects lower socioeconomic sectors far more than others. The odd thing is that we already spend more per student than most nations of the world. Our return on that investment are high school graduates who are only good for stacking boxes in a warehouse and barely good to work at the local coffee shop. Being that about 60% of kids go from high school to college, that means 40% of adults leaving high school have no marketable skills whatsoever. From there you have to look at what portion of that 60% actually finish college with what I will call a useful degree and how many drop out. A useful degree adds enough value to have better than minimum wage employment. There are lots of degree programs out there that are a straight path to minimum wage + no real marketable skills + lifetime college debt. Those who drop out are back to having no marketable skills due to the failure of our K-12 education. The data [0] (interesting site) seems to show that only about 30% of the 60% who go to college actually graduate. Once again, that is terrible. No useful skills from high school and the vast majority of our college-bound students don't or can't graduate. This is not an example of a school system designed to lift people out of their station in life. Quite to the contrary. It is an expensive mess with bad outcomes everywhere. I could go on. STEM education is a topic I am obviously passionate about. I can't say I have not tried to make things better. I can only hit my head against a brick wall for so long. At some point all I could do is revert inward to devote my time, attention and resources to my own kids. They are doing great. They are far more advanced in STEM than any of their peers. I was willing to devote a nontrivial amount of time to help hundreds of kids in this region. The system expelled me, rather than those who are likely actively causing damage to our kids. That's sad. [0] http://www.higheredinfo.org/dbrowser/index.php?submeasure=24&year=2018&level=nation&mode=graph&state= http://www.higheredinfo.org/dbrowser/index.php?submeasure=24...

mlyle 4y ago

> That implies (and requires) that bad teachers are expunged from the system like a bad infection. Good luck with this, when the working conditions and compensation are such that staffing education at all is a massive struggle, let alone being selective. (I do think that quality of teachers is sometimes an issue, but I think there are larger systemic issues impeding education than the quality of workers on the front line.) > teaching methods, technology and curriculum Teaching methods and curriculum are important. And educational research is mostly crap: well controlled studies basically don't exist. EdTech, etc, is part of the problem. Occasionally technology is a great support to teaching, but I'm a STEM teacher who teaches the "T" without much technology at all: certainly much less than is trendy in core classrooms (like, no joke, having middle school students write out machine language programs on paper). Edtech is expensive and very often unproven snake oil that allows distractions into your classroom, but it's something administrators love to point to to show they're doing something.

robomartin 4y ago
> when the working conditions and compensation are such that staffing education at all is a massive struggle, let alone being selective Of course. And that needs to change. Right? However, this should not be a freebie. Pay more? Absolutely. And, with that, comes a require for excellence and performance that should be no different from any job where, if you don't perform, you are out looking for work elsewhere. > I'm a STEM teacher who teaches the "T" without much technology at all This is crazy. I am not sure how to put it other than, with the money we spend our public schools should be so good that private schools --not just in the US, world-wide-- should use them as a tough-to-follow metric. I have tried very hard in our own school district to help up the level of STEM education in a range of ways. My first attempt was with one of the local elementary schools. I offered to fully fund and conduct a model airplane STEM program for up to 100 students (about three classrooms). I would provide airplane kits to build and, for the more advanced class, also the radio control equipment. I met with the Principal to discuss. A couple of meetings later the county and school district got involved. The only way I can described what happened is "dystopian". Rather than jump on the opportunity to provide our kids with something like this, the reaction and interaction was in a range between being ghosted and feeling like I was the enemy at the gates. Truly incomprehensible. My next attempt, years later, was to introduce a robotics class as at four local schools (two elementary, one middle and one high school). I scheduled and met with all four Principals from these schools. I brought with me a short presentation as well as a small inexpensive robot made from 3D printed parts and RC servos with an Arduino for control. Once again, I volunteered to fund the entire thing at all four schools. Well received. Good conversation. One of the Principals took lead and proposed to organize a meeting with the science and math teachers from all four schools. This felt like progress. What happened next? I was ghosted. Seriously. And my kids attended two of these schools at that time. The meeting never happened. Emails and calls were never returned. Nothing. Once again, I eventually dropped the matter. Fast forward to just about a month ago. I offered the local high school's Physics teacher to come in every so often to help with anything she needed. I could bring interesting STEM show-and-tell items from my work in aerospace, robotics and more. She was kind enough to thank me for the offer. Since then, silence. I asked one more time. Nothing. One of my kids is in her class. I spend more time teaching my kid the Physics she is not teaching than she probably does actually teaching the kids in class. It's crazy. We have a bad teacher problem. We have a bad schools problem. Until the system is morphed into one where excellent teachers and excellent schools survive and bad ones do not, we are not going to improve outcomes. And, yes, of course, this affects lower socioeconomic sectors far more than others. The odd thing is that we already spend more per student than most nations of the world. Our return on that investment are high school graduates who are only good for stacking boxes in a warehouse and barely good to work at the local coffee shop. Being that about 60% of kids go from high school to college, that means 40% of adults leaving high school have no marketable skills whatsoever. From there you have to look at what portion of that 60% actually finish college with what I will call a useful degree and how many drop out. A useful degree adds enough value to have better than minimum wage employment. There are lots of degree programs out there that are a straight path to minimum wage + no real marketable skills + lifetime college debt. Those who drop out are back to having no marketable skills due to the failure of our K-12 education. The data [0] (interesting site) seems to show that only about 30% of the 60% who go to college actually graduate. Once again, that is terrible. No useful skills from high school and the vast majority of our college-bound students don't or can't graduate. This is not an example of a school system designed to lift people out of their station in life. Quite to the contrary. It is an expensive mess with bad outcomes everywhere. I could go on. STEM education is a topic I am obviously passionate about. I can't say I have not tried to make things better. I can only hit my head against a brick wall for so long. At some point all I could do is revert inward to devote my time, attention and resources to my own kids. They are doing great. They are far more advanced in STEM than any of their peers. I was willing to devote a nontrivial amount of time to help hundreds of kids in this region. The system expelled me, rather than those who are likely actively causing damage to our kids. That's sad. [0] http://www.higheredinfo.org/dbrowser/index.php?submeasure=24&year=2018&level=nation&mode=graph&state= http://www.higheredinfo.org/dbrowser/index.php?submeasure=24...